Creativity vs Copyright and the Digital World: who will win? Who SHOULD win?

Creativity
Vs
Copyright and Digital World
Who will win? Who SHOULD win?
By Marco Fioretti
http://mfioretti.com
Marco Fioretti (marco@digifreedom.net) 2017/05/19 Scuola Romana dei Fumetti
http://stop.zona-m.net/ Some Rights Reserved

A Digital World is wonderful for creators
• Examples: Tie Fighter, Dark Resurrection...
• Great works, Great Exposure, with less and less money

Copyright: what it should be, and what it IS
• Protect and reward authors.. was NOT the original purpose of most copyright laws
• Encouraging authors with copyright only was a method to achieve the purpose of
common good = give people more culture, education, entertainment
• In its current form, copyright:
• Lasts too long (70+ years after death of creators?!?)
• It’s too wide in scope
• Result: continuous abuses (thanks to digitization!) to:
• Censor: block free speech/political dissent
• Block creation of future, competing works
(*) Example: www.techdirt.com/articles/20120407/00171418416/yes-copyrights-sole-purpose-is-to-benefit-public.shtml

Of 173 Super-Hero Movies since 1977...
10+ Superman (1938!)
9+ Batman (1939!)
9+ Captain America (1941! / 1964)
13+ X-Men (1963)

Creativity! No, wait...
●
77 out of 173 movies in 40 years are reboots/spin-offs/sequels/continuity..
●
Of stuff that is 60/70 years old
●
Owned by the same 2/3 distributors and 5/6 publishers
(Including Disney, which does even worst with traditional tales)
●
Who forbid everybody else to make their own original movies with the
same characters, at least for profit (*)
●
Thanks to copyright that “promotes and protect creativity”
(*) Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_film#Legal_situation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5933976/are-fan-fiction-and-fan-art-legal

Corporate-only creativity? No, thanks
●
possible only thanks the combination of:
●
Digital technology (3D, VFX, promotion through social media...)
●
Abuse of copyright in time and scope
●
Bad for creativity, creators, the economy, culture, free speech...
●
saturates the market
●
raises entry costs
●
does not block copies: only future, original, but independent works with
the same characters

What if Batman and Superman were...
Source: www.techdirt.com/articles/20160714/10232234972/fans-case-putting-batman-superman-public-domain.shtml
“DC would
still (*)
make lots
of money
because...”
(*) thanks to
digitization, of
course

What if Captain America was...
(*) https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/17i15b/what_does_captain_america_have_to_say_about/
“Captain America...
was born in 1922, so he
would probably have
some old-fashioned
ideas about sexuality.”
(*)
“he's a huge Bible nut”
(*)
Homophobe and/or
a religious fanatic?
•Realistic
•Thought provoking
•100% legal, free
speech-wise
•NOT going to happen,
thanks to copyright,
because it would hurt
commercial interests

The (Italian) MGS fan movie you will never see
The CREATOR of Metal Gear Solid wants to see it.
The copyright owners of MGS do not. End of story
Source: http://kotaku.com/the-metal-gear-solid-fan-film-well-never-see-finished-1649735326

Free Asterix and Poirot!
Asterix: born ~60 years ago
still “copyrighted” by people who never
wrote or drew anything
Poirot: Born 100 years ago
40 years after Agata Christie’s death,
you must ask permission to OTHERs to
publish new Poirot novels

“Out of Print”??? No way!
• In a digital world, “Out of Print” has
NO RIGHT to exist
• It is economically feasible to print on
demand, ad libitum
• Is it right to deny people the right to
buy books, etc... in this way?
• Is it convenient for the actual
authors?
This book is
only 30 years
old, but
nobody can
buy it NEW.
WHY?

The death of Fair Use and Public Domain

The death of Fair Use and Public Domain
• Creative works done today will not be “free” before 2087
• No old works in public domain from 2011 to 2019
•“Intellectual property” CANNOT be like “Physical Property”
• Education and Free Speech need circulation and reuse
• Culture and Creativity need the past, and reuse of the past
But they are now locked by copyright abuse (“Out of print”, Orphan Works...)
Via digitization, and against original purpose of copyright
Suggested Reading: http://mttlr.org/2011/01/06/the-death-of-the-public-domain/ and https://law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/

Digital Dangers for Creators and Culture

Digital age & Digitization: what do they mean?
• Digitization =
Encode, as huge strings of
1s and 0s,...
In order to store and/or share them...
Every kind of data or document!
110010100110101010010010
• Extremely convenient: one storage & network for everything
• Quite harmful for creativity and culture, but only if you don’t
know it!

Copyright lost by author’s own fault
Gene Roddenberry:
• Star Trek Creator
• “Super Geek”
• But so “smart” that
he did not properly
save his own
screenplays and
notes

Copyright lost by author’s own fault
If you store your work in secret, proprietary file formats that can
only be decoded with one, proprietary software program...
The one who literally controls the “right to copy” is the author of
that software
And it is only YOUR FAULT
Ignorance of digital matters is not excusable anymore for creators

And video/videogames are even worst...
Nintendo
Flipnotes
from only seven
years ago
already lost?

Digital Dangers: closure of the analog hole
Current laws and treaties (DRM, DMCA, etc) make it illegal to circumvent digital protection
for copying. Analog to digital is (still) legal. Therefore, analog outputs are “BAD!”
Results: you are forced to buy again (if possible...) what was already yours (VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray...)
Besides paying for “pirating” your OWN pictures, texts, etc... whenever you buy a new phone, drive...

Digital Dangers: CENTRALIZED networks
Above: an episode of “Mr Rogers”
• lost ~30 years ago,
• found and put on YouTube in March 2017
Below: same video, removed 1 day later because of
copyright holders that were NOT using it at all
Source: http://stop.zona-m.net/2017/03/all-the-absurdity-of-modern-copyright-in-one-removal/
Centralized social media =
• Much more visibility
• Much more (automatic) copyright abuse against
creators and culture

Digital Dangers: Loss of Net Neutrality
AKA “transforming the Internet into the next (closed) TV
“Faster” for major content distributors
Slower, or closed, to all OTHER creators and innovators
Reference: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/05/18/one-step-closer-closed-internet/

Final proposals/provocations
Reduce copyright duration to 10, max 20 years after publication
Make derivative but original works NOT blockable (with mandatory payment of
fixed percentage on profits, if any?)
To creators:
• become MUCH more knowledgeable of digital formats, protocols,
networks, licenses... than, on average, they are today
• use and demand OPEN formats, protocols, software... in your work
• evaluate alternative licenses, e.g. Creative Commons
• to gain much more independence and opportunities

Creativity vs Copyright and the Digital World: who will win? Who SHOULD win?

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